Brewery Rickoli is one of five breweries featured in a Sam Adams collaboration 12-pack.

Rick Abitbol of Brewery Rickoli, cleaning out a vat, has one of the beers featured in "Brewing the American Dream", a mixed 12-pack being distributed nationally through the Sam Adams program. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Brewery Rickoli’s Rick Abitbol is quick with a joke when asked about his face appearing on beer bottles across the nation.

“I’m just surprised they got the label on without breaking the bottle,” he laughs.

The Wheat Ridge brewer’s oatmeal stout — and Abitbol’s picture — are featured nationwide this month in a collaboration 12-pack from Samuel Adams that features five breweries.

It’s huge recognition for Brewery Rickoli, one of the smallest breweries in Colorado and one of the few that makes only gluten-removed beers. And for Abitbol, it’s far more than just a big-name collaboration — it’s a statement.

“We got our gluten-removed beer in a regular 12-pack with regular beers,” he says. “We are trying to use that to break down the walls and the perception that (gluten-removed beer) must be different or not as good because you’re saying the g-word.”

Most people who try the rich-in-flavor stout, he says, won’t even realize it’s different. The Oats McGoats is medium-bodied with chocolate and roast flavors complemented by a thread of sweetness from the oats. But there’s a stereotype that Abitbol’s battled since opening five years ago.

“The minute you say the ‘gluten’ word … people automatically assume that the taste must be substandard,” he says. “So I have to brew beers twice as good as the next guy to be considered half as good.”

Jim Koch, one of craft beer’s pioneers, saw Brewery Rickoli’s potential when it started in 2012. The Sam Adams founder’s Brewing the American Dream initiative to help new and small breweries loaned Abitbol $10,000.

“As an out-of-work brewer just fired from my last two jobs, to get a bank loan” was near impossible, Abitbol recalls. “They loaned us money when no one else would.”

Koch encountered similar problems when he launched in 1984. “We’re proud to have collaborated with these creative and passionate brewers in a way that allows us to continue to pay it forward and empower fellow independent craft brewers to be successful and to grow,” Koch said in a statement.

Abitbol launched his own business with more than a decade experience as a professional brewer, but the initiative allowed him to learn more about the business side of the operation. The new collaboration beer began at a subsequent trip to Boston as part of a mentorship program in 2016.

The best business advice he remembers receiving from Koch: “Make money, don’t spend money.”

Abitbol still brews in a weathered strip mall on Wadsworth Boulevard with hand-me-down equipment that isn’t much different from his days as a homebrewer.

Two years ago, Brewery Rickoli won a Great American Beer Festival silver medal in the competitive barley wine category. And he credits a regular crowd of locals for helping to keep the three-barrel nanobrewery alive.

Now the Sam Adams collaboration is bringing in new craft beer fans and helping generate more interest from local stores about carrying his beers. The next step, he says, is another small loan to help him improve his beer bottling equipment, which he essentially operates by hand.

The more places that carry Brewery Rickoli, the more Abitbol hopes to spread the word about gluten-removed beers. He is not sensitive to gluten but sees it as an unfilled niche in the beer market.

What most people don’t realize, he says, is that he brews a traditional beer with malted barley and wheat — but then adds an enzyme to remove the gluten. The enzyme reduces the gluten levels to less than 10 parts per million, he says, essentially making it undetectable. The FDA certifies food as gluten-free at 20 parts per million.

Abitbol offers a blunt assessment of other gluten-reduced beers on the market. “It’s like those guys don’t get it,” he says. “These big guys will brew a beer and they dumb it down for very vanilla palates.

“Just because you have a sensitivity doesn’t mean you don’t have taste buds.”